The Summer Children

by Dot Hutchison

  “Groupthink is a useful tool, if it’s not overused,” I say mildly.

  Simpkins doesn’t encourage that degree of interdependence among her agents. She and Vic used to argue about it sometimes, especially after she got stuck with us for a month while Vic was in the hospital.

  “That isn’t your entire theory,” she says after a minute.

  “I think you need to look at the social workers,” I admit. “When a parent is sexually abusing a child, the father is usually the safe assumption, but this person knew to go after the mother. This is someone with access to the accusations, at least, maybe even the files themselves. This is someone in the system.”

  “Or someone attached to someone in the system.”

  Eddison shifts uncomfortably. “That would be a pretty big indiscretion, Agent Simpkins. Someone who spills secrets like that would be fired pretty quickly.”

  “Perhaps. Or perhaps they only spill secrets to one individual.”

  “Even if that’s the case, they’re still complicit,” I point out. “These murders have been hitting the news; the details may not be out there, but the names are. Even if the one in the system isn’t doing the killing, they have to realize that it isn’t a coincidence. If they’re actively part of it, if they’re just trying to protect a partner, they’re still helping a murderer.”

  “We’ll see,” she says noncommittally. “Thank you for your assistance, agents. You can leave now.” She takes the paper dolls from Mignone’s hand and disappears back into the hallway.

  Mignone stares after her, looking conflicted. “Is she always . . .”

  “Yes,” we answer in unison. Eddison gives me a ghost of a grin and continues, “Whatever word you were reaching for, yes, the answer is always yes.”

  “She plays things very close to the chest,” I add. “She doesn’t like assumptions, she doesn’t like what she perceives to be sloppy language, and she thinks verbal free-for-alls are undisciplined. For all that, she’s a very good agent with a solid track record.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “After she meets Holmes and forms an opinion, she’ll assign one of her agents to be the main point of contact with MPD. She’s got good people under her.”

  Mignone’s salt-and-pepper moustache twitches; it’s bushy enough that his exact expression is a little hard to read. “When honesty and loyalty collide, which wins?”

  “Honesty.” At the repeated unison—unintentional this time—Eddison and I turn and stick our tongues out at each other, and Mignone barks a laugh.

  “It’s a shame you two can’t work this. I get it,” he continues quickly, holding up one hand, though I’m not sure either of us was about to protest. “Just a shame.”

  My skin crawls with the need to be working this case, to push everything else to the side and find out who’s doing this, who is this person who cares so much in such a twisted way.

  That’s probably exactly why I’m not allowed to.

  Once upon a time, there was a girl who was scared of angels.

  Some of Daddy’s friends called her that, pretty angel or just Angel. Mama used to call her that, but she’d stopped even before she died. One of the men even had a little pewter pin of an angel he always wore on his shirts, between his collar and his shoulder. She stared at it whenever Daddy took his money. He said it was his guardian angel.

  She tried to think of other things, like the fort back in the woods. It seemed so far away, and she’d dreamed of taking a blanket and a bag of clothes and running away to live there forever. The other kids in the neighborhood played there, but she’d never been welcome. Or maybe she could just walk, and walk and walk and walk, and end up someplace new every day, and Daddy couldn’t follow. But she couldn’t escape. No matter how hard she tried to think of other things.

  One night, while she stared at that angel pin, there was a knock on the door upstairs. You could always hear everything in that house; it had no secrets. All the men froze. There was never a knock at night. Everyone was already there. There was a voice calling something, loud but indistinct over the music. The little girl kept her eyes on the angel.

  But the noise continued, and before Daddy and his friends got to their feet, the basement door was kicked in with a blaze of light, forging halos behind the people who stood there. The man with the pin pulled away from her, and in the panic and babble, one of Daddy’s friends lifted a gun.

  The little girl didn’t pay much attention to the gun; that was never the thing to hurt her.

  Instead, she watched one of the new people approach her, dark curls limned in light. The woman crouched over her, covering the little girl’s body as much as she could, but her gun stayed in her hands and trained on Daddy’s friend until he dropped his gun to the carpet and put his hands in the air.

  Then the woman grabbed a blanket and wrapped the little girl in it, hugging her close but oh so gently. Her eyes were kind and sad, and she stroked the girl’s hair and whispered that she was going to be okay, she was going to be okay. She was safe now. She gave the girl a teddy bear to hug and cry into, and stayed with her even as others crowded into the basement to take away Daddy and all his friends. Daddy was furious, yelling terrible things, but the woman just hugged the girl, and covered her ears so she didn’t have to hear what her daddy said. The lady stayed with her in the ambulance, and in the hospital, and told her she was going to be okay.

  Once upon a time, there was a little girl who was scared of angels.

  Then she met one, and she wasn’t afraid anymore.

  15

  Late the next morning, when the caffeine from the many coffee runs has stripped a hole in my gut, I take the elevator down to the cafeteria to pick up some bagels or whatever else strikes my fancy. On the way back up, another agent skips into the otherwise empty car just before the doors close.

  “Have you eaten lunch yet?”

  “Hello to you, too, Cass.”

  Cassondra Kearney is on Simpkins’s team, but she’s also a friend. We came up through the academy together and now that I think on it, she’s probably the biggest reason the survival guide has, well . . . survived. She’s wearing her glasses, which means she’s at least halfway to exhausted. “Lunch?”

  I look down at the bundle of plastic-wrapped sandwiches in my arms, then at the slightly manic glint in her eye. That glint never spells good things for me. “Let me give these to Eddison and Sterling, and I’ll grab my bag.”

  “Great. I’ll wait for you here.”

  “In the elevator?”

  She glances at the opening doors, then positions herself in the corner with the control panel, where she can’t be seen from the hall. Cass attempting subterfuge is invariably frightening. As bad as she is at it, though, she always has a good reason for it, so rather than argue, I’ll go along with it.

  Eddison isn’t at his desk, but Sterling is at hers, reading through a consult request I’m not allowed to touch. I pyramid the sandwiches on the corner of her desk. “Tell him I’m off to lunch with a friend from the academy?”

  “He’ll know who it is?”

  “Probably.” Most of my friends from those days aren’t based in Quantico, so it limits the pool of possibilities. The fact that I didn’t mention the name should be the real tip-off. “I’ll be back.”

  “Roger that.”

  When Cass said she’d wait there, she really meant right there. She’s got a foot stuck in the track to keep the doors from closing. Anderson tries to get past her into the elevator, and she actually snarls at him. I wait just inside the bullpen until he gives up and uses the stairs, then join Cass.

  We don’t talk on the way down, or on our way to the garage. “Are we avoiding being seen together?” I mutter.

  “Please.”

  “Then I’m on level two; pick me up on the way down.”

  She nods, not looking at me. Her keys bounce against her thigh. She jogs off to the garage elevator, and I walk up the ramp to my car on the second level. I don’t think anyone’s
watching, but just in case—and because it will probably make her feel better, as worked up as she is—I rummage through my trunk like I’m looking for something. When I hear her car pull up, I close the trunk, lock the car, and slide into her passenger seat.

  “Now are you going to explain?”

  “We’re going to make a quick stop before we eat,” she says.

  “Where?”

  “Manassas CPS.”

  “Oh shit, Cass.” I close my eyes and let my head thunk back against the headrest. “You wouldn’t be pulling this cloak-and-dagger fuckery if you hadn’t explicitly been told not to involve me.”

  Her pained silence is answer enough.

  “Cass, ¿Qué mierda?”

  “Simpkins says we’re not allowed to update your team at all.” The farther we get from the Bureau building, the more she relaxes into her seat. “It’s not like we took a case over from you; this is your life.”

  “Cass.”

  “They were able to finish the exam on Mason Jeffers,” she says all in a rush. “There were signs of intermittent penetrative abuse, but here’s the kicker: he’s got herpes.”

  “Herpes.”

  “Type one, so basically cold sores, but he’s got it on his genitals.”

  “Let me guess, his mother has a history of cold sores.”

  “Right.”

  I sigh. “A seven-year-old with an STI.”

  “Holmes wants you to talk to the earlier victims. Mason still won’t speak at all, and the psychologist doesn’t think we should push it with having women around him, but Holmes wants you to check in with the others. Simpkins says no contact.”

  “What does Holmes think checking in will do?”

  “Show the killer that you’re still on this.”

  So Holmes had the same thought I did, that the killer’s rage might turn on me if it looks like I abandoned these kids.

  “Unless Holmes withdraws the request for Bureau assistance, Simpkins is agent in charge. She gets to make that call.”

  Cass sneezes. Our entire academy cohort called her Kitten, because she sneezes every time she laughs. “You’re not really going to try to convince me you like it.”

  “No, I fucking hate it, but it’s not my call. And I don’t get to go behind her back.”

  “Actually, I was thinking of telling Holmes to go to Hanoverian.”

  I thump my head against the seat several times, hoping it will knock something useful loose. “You want to tell the local detective to go over your boss’s head to the unit chief so a targeted agent can talk to previous victims.”

  “When you put it like that, it sounds bad.”

  “I wonder why.”

  She sneezes again.

  “If you’re trying to sneak me to the kids, why are you kidnapping me to CPS instead of the hospital?”

  “Because I need to stop at CPS. I was on my way and figured the car ride was the best chance to talk to you.” She chances a glance over at me as she merges onto the highway. “You know how Dru is about your team; she doesn’t think it’s healthy for a team to stay the same for so long. She’s even talking of trading out the Smiths, and they’ve been on her team for six years.”

  “But we’re not the same anymore. Vic got promoted. We stole Sterling from Denver.”

  “She put her name in for unit chief ten months ago.”

  “Shit.”

  “No one ever thought Hanoverian would do it. He’s turned it down so many times before.”

  “But then he got shot in the chest, and it was his only way to stay in the Bureau. She must have been pissed.”

  “She doesn’t like the way he does things, never has. You know that.”

  Most of the case ten months ago had involved Simpkins trying to retrain me and Eddison. I’ve been in the Bureau ten years, Eddison’s been here . . . sixteen? We’re not NATs. It made the case hell because she insisted on treating us like we’ve never learned anything useful under Vic. Eddison’s promotion and Sterling’s transfer came as welcome news, because it meant we were staying a separate team rather than getting folded permanently into Simpkins’s.

  “So what are you going to be doing at CPS?” I ask, not even pretending to reach for a graceful segue.

  “She’s got a theory that the killer may be a social worker.”

  I snort in spite of myself.

  “Let me guess: Your theory?”

  “That she seemed disinclined to pursue.”

  “She’s been a field agent for over twenty years; she wants to move up the ladder while she’s still young enough to make a good run of it.”

  “I hate politics,” I groan. “I just want to do my job. I do not want to keep track of who wanted what promotion or who doesn’t like who.”

  “Well, you’ll be able to put warnings in the welcome guide.”

  “Speaking of which—”

  “Hey, what do you want for lunch when we’re done?” she chirps.

  “Nice try. Why did you give them the NAT guide?”

  Her sheepish smile is the only admission of guilt I really need. “We need something, Mercedes. It’s the beginning of July and we’ve already had twenty agents either transfer out of CAC or leave the Bureau entirely, just this year.”

  “So why don’t you write it?”

  “How many times did you have to talk me out of quitting the academy?”

  “Every time we had to fire a gun. That just means you don’t like guns. You were fine at everything else.”

  “But a field agent who can’t stand guns isn’t much use as a field agent, is she? You got me past that. Be as pissed as you want that we didn’t tell you the guide was still getting passed around, that’s fair, but you’re the right choice, because no matter how many times you had to talk one of us down, or talk one of us up, you never lied. You never said one single thing that was untrue. That is what we need for the new hires. They don’t need to be babied, they need to be honestly warned. Who’s going to do that better than you?”

  “The only reason I don’t hate you entirely is because this stupid handbook is the only thing between me and suspension.”

  “I accept gratitude in the form of Marlene Hanoverian’s iced cinnamon-raisin rolls.”

  “Don’t push it.”

  My phone buzzes with a text from Sterling. Simpkins is here. Eddison needs to talk to you when you get back from lunch.

  “Problem?” Cass asks, passing a car going fifteen below with its hazards on for no apparent reason.

  “If you and Holmes want me checking on the other kids, we need to do it while we’re here. Once we get back, Eddison has to tell me we’re hands off.”

  “And him telling you that now doesn’t apply?”

  “He didn’t tell me that. He had Sterling tell me something around that.”

  “Okay, maybe I’m starting to question the wisdom of having you teach the noobs.”

  “Too late now.”

  “Well then.” She hits the gas, pushing us to ten, fifteen, twenty over the limit. “Let’s make the most out of lunch.”

  16

  Manassas Child Protective Services is quiet over the lunch hour, most of the staff either out for the meal or eating at their desks so they can keep working on paperwork. The social workers, nurses, and administrators have their own offices, but the center of the largest room is a cluster of half-wall cubicles that stand guard in front of the physical file room. Every digital file has a physical counterpart, just in case, and the clerks are also in charge of putting together duplicate files for law enforcement or the court. There are small, restrained personal touches on the desks, an awareness that for all that this is their working space, it’s also a public space, such as it is.

  “Can I help you?” asks the woman at the closest cubby. She’s probably early twenties, with a bright smile and a lanyard covered with the FSU logo. There’s a row of fuzzy pastel pencil toppers stuck to the top of her monitor, a cheerful lineup of cats, foxes, puppies, and rubber ducks, with a teddy bear in
the middle, and a small, neatly framed cross-stitch that reads Life sucks and then you die: some days it’s hard to tell the difference in a charming block font with a border of hearts and flowers. She looks familiar in the same way so many of the new agent trainees look familiar: a twenty-something’s wonder at the world beyond college and the struggle with the lingering freshman fifteen. It makes me feel old, and I’m still too young for that, damn it.

  Cass steps forward, given that I’m not really supposed to be here. “I’m Agent Cassondra Kearney, with the FBI. What is your name, please?”

  “Caroline,” the clerk replies, a dimple deepening in her cheek. “Caroline Tillerman. How can I help you today, Agent?”

  “If I give you a list of case numbers, are you able to give me a list of everyone who’s worked on those files?”

  Caroline’s smile dims, her head tilting to one side. “I can take down your information and give it to one of the admins,” she says after a moment, “but I’m pretty sure they’ll need a warrant. I mean, I know it’s not as sensitive as the files themselves, but I don’t think I’m allowed to give that out. Sometimes families can get a little angry, you know?”

  Oh, I know.

  “Which admin would you be passing that to?” Cass asks. “Because we have a warrant in the works, and if I can get their information, I can just send the warrant along once the judge signs it. Get a jump start on both sides of it.”

  “Our direct supervisor here in Records is Derrick Lee, and he’s in his office. I can introduce you?”

  “That would be excellent, Caroline, thank you.”

  Caroline stands and adjusts the heart-shaped locket at her throat with a gesture that looks ingrained, and leads Cass back into the hallway. She throws a curious look at me over her shoulder, but I’m probably going to cause enough trouble just by being here. I don’t really need to give a supervisor reason to remember I was here.

  Instead, I stroll down the aisle that splits the sections of cubbies, taking in the personalizations. Either someone in the office cross-stitches or they bought them together, because all six desks have a similar frame to Caroline’s, all of them just a little subversive until the last, tucked away in a corner where visitors are least likely to see it, raises the bar with its flower-bordered Bless this fucking office. It’s both charming and disheartening.